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The majority of professional illustrators I know work in colour and then have their work greyscaled for black and white books. Certainly I have seen colour originals of artworks that went into B&W Exalted books of earlier editions.

I expect the cost of a colour book is in the production phase, not commissioning.

Depending on the artist, a color commission can be double to four times more than black and white. For printing in b&w vs color, it's much the same, but then we're talking about multiplying thousands of dollars.

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I can see why people expected more. &quot;our EX3 Dev Team will collaborate to create the Official EX3 Anathema Character Management Toolkit.&quot; to me is a promise to create something, not just collaborate with no obligation to actually get things done. I know you can split hairs on what was technically said, but I think a reasonable person's reading of this stretch goal is very different than what it is being sold as after the fact. Nowhere in this stretch goal is any wording of uncertainty, it is presented as something much more formal that it apparently was in reality. I don't see how this can simultaneously be the &quot;Official&quot; character creator...and also a fan project completely unrelated to any responsibility on the part of OPP, the informal nature of this relationship should have been disclosed from the get go.

It was discussed over and over in the various comments sections at the time and we and the Anathema team were as clear as anybody could have been during all the madness that was that Kickstarter about the independent nature of their project. So you _can_ read that blurb in the way some people have, but once we say that that was never the intent, it's not retconning, it's restating what was always the situation. We've learned a great deal about how to phrase Kickstarter blurbs since then.

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Are you only planning on looking at stretch goals here? Because there's more stuff that wasn't stretch goals but was still outside the scope of just the core book. Two examples are the classic PDFs, which I believe have all been delivered, and the book of extra charms, which has been released but falls short of the 50+ pages stated in the Kickstarter.

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Are you only planning on looking at stretch goals here? Because there's more stuff that wasn't stretch goals but was still outside the scope of just the core book. Two examples are the classic PDFs, which I believe have all been delivered, and the book of extra charms, which has been released but falls short of the 50+ pages stated in the Kickstarter.

Fewer pages than estimated, but many more Charms than originally planned.

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Fewer pages than estimated, but many more Charms than originally planned.

So, I have no intention of running you through the ringer about not describing things quite right leading to bad assumptions. You've accepted that that was a problem, apologized, and promised to improve in the future, and I really, truly appreciate that. As such, it doesn't really bother me that the Kickstarter said "pages" when it probably should have said "charms". That's an understandable and easily forgivable mistake.

What bothers me is that Miracles of the Solar Exalted is already at less than 2.5 charms per page, roughly half the rate of the core book if my very rough estimate is at all accurate. In other words, these are already long charms. Drop that by "many charms" and I have no idea how anyone with any knowledge of Exalted charms and mechanics could say "Hm, about 60 charms, about 50 pages, so about 1.25 charms per page or so? Yeah, that sounds about right." While I can accept that maybe this is the best you could do given the many issues that have plagued this line since it was announced, "We gave you more content than planned, which is still less than all but the most generous estimates would have expected from a 50 page document" just doesn't do it for me. Especially on content that, unlike Anathema, should have been fully within Onyx Path's control.

And just to be clear, this is not even remotely a severe enough problem for me to abandon this game or anything like that. In the grand scheme of things, it's not that big a deal. I just don't think this particular item can be truthfully marked as "Delivered as promised."

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And yes, an estimate is a promise. It's not an exact promise, no, but calling something an estimate is not carte blanche to put out whatever you feel like in complete disregard of the estimate.

We didn't just put out whatever we felt like, we put out the backer Charms plus a bunch of extra Charms that only were added because John Morke wanted to add them. When we estimated about a page per Charm, thus giving us 50+ as a page count estimate, we did not have any idea how the Charms would be written nor how much space they would take up. Remember, the book was not finished, it was the Charms specifically that the Devs needed to rewrite, and we were years before the text would hit layout.

But that all is immaterial to the point that this wasn't a book that we were offering based on filling page count, it was a collection of the backer Charms that came out of the rewards. So 20 pages or 100, it was going to contain as many Charms as there were backer rewards for them. And it was only offered, as an Add-on PDF, because there was so much demand for it by the other backers who didn't pledge for the Charms but wanted a chance to contribute. So it wasn't like we had the thing specced out ahead of time, it came together during the KS and after. So that estimate, was exactly that, an estimate on page count that ultimately was less pages but more Charms that originally planned.

But hey, since you feel badly about the thing, send me your PayPal info to richt@theonyxpath.com and I'll refund your $5.

But that all is immaterial to the point that this wasn't a book that we were offering based on filling page count, it was a collection of the backer Charms that came out of the rewards.

And like I said, I have no intention or desire to beat you up for expressing it poorly. I was just baffled at what sort of estimate could lead to the final product being so far off. Apparently that estimate was "one charm per page", which is, quite frankly, insane, but so be it. I've said my piece.

But hey, since you feel badly about the thing, send me your PayPal info to richt@theonyxpath.com and I'll refund your $5.

If I cared enough about this to ask for a $5 refund, believe me, my far, far larger concerns about the state of the line over the last several years would have led me to demand a refund for my full Orichalcum edition pledge. As it is, I'm very glad I didn't. As I've said elsewhere, the last few weeks have done quite a lot to improve my opinion of things and restore my hope (not the least was finally receiving my book and map). Please don't take anything I've said here as an attack on you, the company, or the game line. It was just meant as an honest bit of constructive criticism listing a couple items from the kickstarter and their status. Obviously you and I disagree over how it should be listed, but as you've said before that future kickstarters will avoid some of the incorrect or ambiguous word choices, the point should be moot going forward and isn't worth derailing this thread over. Apologies for doing so.

Edit: and just to add so this ends on a more positive note, the Orichalcum Edition and the map are both gorgeous, and I will proudly display them as part of my game collection for years to come. So massive props where due!

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@Whirlwind Monk Fair enough, and thanks for going over this with me. Most of all, now that we are able to get EX3 rolling again as a line, I don't want to let lingering concerns or disappointments lie without discussing them, and hopefully making backers feel a tiny bit better about how things went. Thanks!

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I'm just saying that people weren't crazy or delusional when estimating the size of Miracles, because despite having made a set number of custom charms available for purchase, those were supposed to (and did) come with developers notes. And the estimation of the space those notes would take are probably what threw the wrench at that estimate machine.

It wasn't "We have 50 custom charms for sale, assuming we sell them all, what is the size of the book? 50 pages! Cuz Charmz!". It is really hard to predict how chatty people get when talking about their creative process.

It was only 5 bucks anyways, and we got many more Charms than promissed.